The Council of Fashion Designers of America recently announced that after a unanimous vote, CFDA President Diane von Furstenberg will retrain her position through 2016, marking her 10th year at the helm of the council. To celebrate the fashion icon’s landmark anniversary, we’re taking a look back at her decade spanning career, and the simple little dress that launched an empire.
Diane von Furstenberg was born Diane Simone Michelle Halfin on December 31, 1946 in Brussels, Belgium. She studied at finishing schools in Spain, England and Switzerland, eventually attending the University of Geneva. While at university, Diane met Prince Egon von Furstenberg, son of a German prince and heir to the Fiat automobile fortune, who she married in 1969. The now-Princess von Fursenberg took an apprenticeship with Italian textile manufacturer Angelo Ferretti, sparking her interest in fashion manufacturing and design. In late 1969 the von Furstenbergs moved to New York City, where she began designing clothes in the dining room of their apartment. In 1970 von Furstenberg showed her first collection at New York City’s Gotham Ballroom, and established her own clothing manufacturing company in 1972. That same year Diane and Egon, now parents to two children, divorced.
In 1974, von Furstenberg introduced the world to a knitted jersey “wrap dress,” a dress that closed in the front by wrapping one end of the fabric across the other and securing the two with a tie or clasp. The dress was a huge success among working women, and becoming a symbol of feminine power, confidence and sexual liberation. By the mid-1970s von Furstenberg had sold over a million of the iconic dresses, appearing in one herself on the cover of Newsweek in 1976. The designer described her fashions in a 1976 Vogue interview as ““little dresses that were, you know, not for an old lady and not too expensive.”
In 1985 von Furstenberg moved to Paris, where she took a hiatus from fashion to launch a publishing house. In 1997, after a wildly successful stint selling her Silk Assets clothing line on QVC, von Furstenberg re-launched her label, including a re-release of the wrap dress that launched her into fashion history. In the years since, the DvF empire has expanded to include jewelry, beachwear, fragrances, a denim line, a children’s collection and a home collection. The groundbreaking wrap dress’ 40th anniversary was celebrated this year with the “Diane von Furstenberg: Journey of a Dress” traveling exhibition, showcasing vintage and contemporary incarnations of the dress.
The accomplished designer’s fashions have become a hit with celebrities like Kate Middleton, Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Jessica Alba and Michelle Obama, who wore a DvF wrap dress on the official White House Christmas card in 2009. The dress also made a notable appearance in the 2013 film American Hustle, which caused a stir with its 70s inspired styles. A new book of von Furstenberg’s memoirs, following 1998’s Diane: A Signature Life, will be published in November 2014.